Ring oscillators fabricated in laser-annealed silicon-on-insulator

Both seven and eleven stage n-MOS ring oscillators with 6 µm channel length have been successfully fabricated in scanning. CW argon laser-annealed polycrystalline silicon islands, which are defined prior to the laser annealing step, on oxide substrates. The ring oscillators, which have a fan-out of three, have a switching delay per stage of 58 nsec and a power-delay product of about 7 pJ operating at a supply voltage (V
DD
) of 5 volts and switching between V
DD
and ground. The most serious difficulty encountered during circuit fabrication was the deformation of the silicon islands resulting from laser annealing with extensive laser power density.